Hacker News Reader

Comment by Andhurati | Hacker News Reader

What has this offered to your country? Why doesn't it have it's Amazon or SpaceX? Why is the Linux Foundation here? Why are the salaries in the most unregulated or frontier markets the best in the US and not in Europe?

Mandating a week off for everyone doesn't seem to give the space needed for poorer people to become as wealthy as they might deserve. What can be done?

View on HN

Agglomeration dynamics, a great higher education system, 300M+ people who share the same language, and a common market go a long way. Cheap finance and government support (defense spending) also help.

If you want to attribute America's economic advantage to hours worked or labor regulations (and yes, they do matter to an extent), you have to be ready to explain why Russia, Mexico, Greece, and Chile aren't also economic powerhouses.

Source: https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

It's not obvious what can be done. Efforts to distribute the wealth (post WW2 style) will most likely lead to capital flight, and you guys have a gargantuan mass media machine devoted to making sure this kind of thing does not happen to begin with. America is experiencing advanced regulatory capture and the solutions were needed decades ago.

My personal conjecture is that you're in for a long period of degradation followed by something violent. Fascism most likely.

Sad, but likely true. It would appear as an observer that facist ideals are on the rise even in the youngest genrrations, but that may be simply me noticing it more.

Yes, unfortunately. It doesn't help that Americans are culturally unable to process the idea that we are not "the best" even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Those are ridiculous claims. Do you have any evidence do back up your claims that having no minimum number of legal days off is related in any way to prosperity? Proof from almost every other OECD country says no.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com